Blackjack is a casino card game that is played by two or more players against a dealer. The game begins with the dealer shuffling and dealing two cards to each player, including themselves. Afterwards, each player decides whether to hit or stand depending on the content of the dealer’s face-up card. A player may also choose to double down.
Once each player has decided on their strategy, they must then place a bet before the cards are dealt. Typically, the minimum and maximum bets are posted on the table. After placing a bet, the dealers will deal each player two cards, face up. Then the players must decide if they want to hit, stand, double down, or surrender. If a player’s hand value is 21 or higher, they win the game. Otherwise, the player will bust and lose.
If the dealer’s up-card is an ace, a player can choose to take “insurance,” which is a bet that the dealer has a ten in the hole to complete a blackjack. This bet is usually placed for half the original bet and pays a 2-1 payout if the dealer does have a blackjack. Most players will recommend taking insurance, as it increases the likelihood of winning a hand.
While blackjack’s popularity has declined in recent years, it remains a popular and profitable casino game. However, baccarat and sports betting have made significant gains in Nevada, pushing blackjack to the margins of the market. Why has this happened? It might have something to do with blackjack’s association with a math-fearing and elitist image. But is it really that bad?
The psychological consequences of regret and omission bias are complex to study in experimental settings. But blackjack offers an intriguing setting to investigate these issues. The game is sufficiently simple that its key features are easily controllable in a laboratory setting, while its unique rules make it possible to categorize and document departures from optimal play in an unambiguous way.
In two studies, we used an individual-differences design to examine how participants’ confidence in their knowledge of blackjack strategy correlated with psychological and behavioral outcomes such as outcome expectations, anxiety levels, risk taking, and information search and consideration. We found that greater unjustified confidence correlated with increased risk taking and reduced use of hints designed to improve the quality of a blackjack strategy, and it also influenced the magnitude of outcome expectations.
In the final analysis, however, the results suggest that a combination of factors explains why some players experience more regret than others. In particular, the results support the hypothesis that lower levels of self-efficacy and uncertainty about how to play blackjack contribute to more negative outcomes. These findings have important implications for the design of educational interventions aimed at improving blackjack players’ performance. Moreover, they offer a new and promising approach for studying the dynamics of regret and omission bias in the context of other casino games.